Fridays
by Elz Durden
Summary: He needed a partner. Neither of them knew just how badly. In a world where it all comes down to Darcy, be afraid. Very afraid. DarcyXCoulson Slow updates
1. Darcy

Friday came with it's usual fanfare. It came at dawn singing, blaring mariachi music with the bass turned up, shaking the windows and sending the charging iphone racing across the nightstand.

All other days of the week, of course, suck.

They are long, stressful and drag around like cats on a scratch post. Friday has the same faults but as the favored Day, this fact is quickly glossed over with constant reminders that Friday can do no wrong.

Later, she will laugh with Friday as she drinks the other days under the bar and out of memory.

Today, on this most honored of Fridays, the coffee was cold and dark when she poured it in to her Styrofoam cup. The powdered cream floated to the top in a thick, clumpy white pond scum. She had a moment of temptation to drink around the layer of gross instead of taking on the task of brewing a new pot.

Only one person in the student lounge dared to brew coffee. It was a woman so old Darcy was pretty sure she came with the building, like the green fridge or the floral wallpaper in the ladies bathroom. It was the first thing she did upon entering the building and had been a part of her morning routine long before Darcy took an internship there and would be making it long after she had left. Well, maybe.

The years have not been kind to the brew master 2000. It predates the wheel – held together by habit, determination and the joy it gets from giving the office gastrointestinal issues.

Darcy know it's only holding out for the day it can take one of them with it in a glorious electronic blaze of faulty wires and smoking grinds.

Not her. Not today.

Instead, she heads down to student lobby, stopping in the 7-11 and to grab an iced coffee. Silently, she thanks whatever goodness in the world allowed a 7-11 to be built on campus. It's cold and sugar filled and leaves her feeling Zen-like.

She can solve world hunger now. Bring about the end of the liberal media. Stop the encroaching desertification of green lands.

From her seat in the computer commons, the white cubic top just high enough to block the view of the other students, she's sure she can change it all.

Coffee is a wonderful thing like that.

The chair next to her is drug out from under the desk, she catches black from the corner of her eye and smiles, her fingers never stopping their relentless dance over the keyboard.

"Come to check in?" She asks and glances over at him, looking over the black suit. "You'll notice today I'm wearing my red shirt."

"You wear a red shirt every Friday." He comments back taking a seat. Of course he notices the looks of the other students and her co-workers give him. There's very little he doesn't notice. He's quite good at understatement.

"I know." She says, still smiling. "I'm trying to say something deep and profound about my role in all this. I'm also considering starting up a support group for NPCs but it would clash with my _me_ time."

"NPC?" He asks, thinking and then answers for her. "A WOW reference. Clever."

Darcy keeps typing, trying to lose herself in the program she's currently breathing life in to. There's the off chance he'll get bored and go away. It's happened in the past. She's not that important and if another, world threatening event rears it's head, Coulson leaves. But sometimes he stays.

The first few times he dropped in on her, she was irritated and angry. He started darkening her days shortly after she left the employment of one Jane Foster. Moved out of New Mexico to Denver and started taking computer programming courses.

It was probably the fact she had saturated her young brain with too many comic books but Darcy knew what tended to happen to the people that skirted the powerful. They were hostage fodder waiting to happen.

When Coulson first approached her, he was polite and honest and when Darcy accused him and SHEILD of pulling some government bullshit of following her around, bugging her house, tapping her wires, he was also straight forward.

"You aren't that important. I thought I'd drop in, make sure you were doing ok."

"You mean make sure some sicko wasn't going to use the fact that I interned with the great 'Jane Foster' for a few semesters as a national security threat."

"Something like that." He answered flatly with a smile.

There was a method to the drop ins. Always on a Friday. No matter if it was weeks or months after their last encounter, Coulson always showed up on a Friday. Darcy reasoned it was a his day off. Maybe Friday was traditionally a slow day for super villains.

It didn't matter what state she was in or where she hid herself away and after waking up to him cooking her breakfast over the campfire outside the tent she had set up in BFE, she gave up and went back to living life as normal as she could. Which was actually pretty normal.

Life moved on and with each passing day, the events of New Mexico grew distant. Every time a new super villain threated the world with domination, she watched it on the news like everyone else. There was that surreal moment where she'd catch Thor or another of the Avengers and think how much bigger they looked on TV, how unreal and untouchable. Once she even caught Jane on the evening news, arm in arm with a beaming Thor. She looked good and happy but there were stress lines were there hadn't been a year before.

Darcy figures the only reason Jane is still around is because she's a super genius and banging Thor. They never kill off the girlfriend. Girlfriend's less amazing, less attractive and pretty dang expendable sidekick, however...

"What are you working on?" Coulson asks, dragging her back to the present.

"Oh come on, you know already."

"You're right I do. But not because of any government conspiracy." He holds up his phone, which is open to her Twitter account, Crewman#6.

"You have got to friend me." She demands with a quick glance at his phone.

"I'll think about it." Coulson answers and tucks the phone away. He moves to leave and Darcy stops what she's doing to watch him go.

"You're wrong, you know." He offers, regarding her with that same passiveness he seems to approach everything with. Like he was commenting on the weather or making polite small talk. "You're worth something on your own. Not all great people have to, how did you put it..."

"Bang someone extraordinary to get taken off the 'dies for dramatic effect list'?"

"Yeah, something like that. Some of us do good in the shadows. Thrive in them. Seek them out. Sometimes, it's the people skirting the heroes that keep it all from going to shit."

Darcy laughs and it's real and that feels almost as good as the coffee. "That's the first time I've ever heard you curse."

"Is it? I apologize." He smiles but it's not all that apologetic. "Think on it though."

Darcy looks back at the screen before her, the lines of code broken down in to actions. She's rather proud of this last one. Very proud. It's not going to save the world. At the most it's going to streamline another, better program that could have the potential to save lives.

But the promise is there. And it's oh so good.

She's starting to feel like maybe, for the first time, she isn't three steps behind the group. Like maybe for the first time, she's skipping next to them. Like maybe, someday, she might be a breath in _front_ of them.

"Hey Coulson," She calls as he makes his way towards the exit. Now everyone in the room is looking at her and him openly. Not that she minds. "Are you offering me a job I don't have to get on my back to apply for?"

"Believe me, no agent gets on their back as part of the hiring process." He seems to consider something and the smile turns in to mortification. "Did I ever mention Fury was the one that recruited me?" With a visible shudder, he pushes open the door that leads to the commons.

And holds it open.

"Ah screw it." Darcy says, grabbing her backpack from off her chair.

She doesn't quite run after him.

But she does feel like for the first time, she's catching up.

A/N – yeah, this is what happens when I read nothing but Loki and Darcy fics all week. Don't get me wrong, _love_ the Darcy/Loki fics. But I started to notice a pretty common trend and was wondering, could Darcy stand alone as a character without having to be tied romantically to someone else? I think the answer is yes. A big huge HELL YES.


	2. Fury

A/N - Ah what the heck Ox King, I might as well give it a go. Thanks for the inspiration. An odd pairing but once that plot took a hold of me, I couldn't let it go!

~.~

There are a few things that are absolutely essential to know when dealing with Nick Fury. At the top of that list was never lie followed immediately by make sure whatever needed to be said got out in the first thirty seconds. Fury hated to feel like his time was being wasted. Lastly, any agent wanting anything from their fearless leader had better to be willing to stand up to the unnerving thing that was Nick Fury's undivided attention.

The way Coulson reasoned it was that his bosses default mode was 'pissed off.' He had been born angry and that was his natural state. Once he had accepted that, Coluson found the man almost agreeable.

In their long relationship, one thing had always held true. As long as no one was foolish enough to try and bull shit him, Fury would yell himself out and only then that switch slowly grind his gears towards 'reasonable'.

It was on a Friday that Coulson slotted himself in for a forty five minute meeting with the man himself.

The office door hadn't even closed when Coulson tucked his hands behind his back at attention and said, "I want to bring Darcy Lewis in."

Fury didn't even look up from his stacks and stacks of paperwork. "No." He said dismissively, his tone final.

Coluson continued to stand there as if he didn't hadn't heard or more correctly, as if that answer had nothing to do with his opening statement. This was a negotiation and he wasn't about to fall for scare tactics. As a senior agent, he had a certain amount of leeway when it came to choosing a partner. It only helped his case that SHEILD had to be mercurial in the application of it's rules. When half the payroll was from another planet or superpowered, HR clung to any gray area it could find.

Fury stopped what he was doing with an irritated look on his face. "I can't help but notice you're still here." The anger in his tone had sent many an agent running.

"I want to bring Darcy Lewis in. As my partner."

_That_ got Fury's full attention and not in a good way. "Well gee, I don't know who you're talking about." He said, condescension lacing his words. "It can't possibly be the Darcy Lewis I'm thinking of."

"Jane's friend." Coluson offered helpfully. "Brown hair, twenty four, five-seven, big boo-."

"I know who the hell you're talking about!" Fury answered with a snarl. "You have lost your goddamn mind because _that_ Dary Lewis brings _nothing_ to the table. Hell, she wasn't even worth tailing for more than a month after that mess in New Mexico!

She's average. A 'C' straight down the middle and I am not talking about her chest size! The single most extraordinary thing she has ever done is been in the wrong place at the wrong time and I sure as hell don't need that skill set on my team."

"That's true. I still want her as my partner." He could feel the corner of his lips starting to turn up and it was all he could do to look passive.

"No! No goddamn way!" Sighing Nick fell back in to his chair, causing it to angle dangerously towards the floor. "I'd have to take out another insurance policy. Do I look like I enjoy paperwork to you?"

"I do the insurance paperwork. You make me."

The two men stared one another down. "Take Barton on."

"Barton's too valuable for the kind of work I do. You need someone that can thrive on the sidelines. Someone that isn't going to be needed in the essential way most of our agents are."

The Director of SHIELD folded his hands together, very slowly and very carefully as if he was afraid he might break a few fingers by mistake.

Coulson watched and waited for his boss to make up his mind. Under all that anger, bravo and scary intelligence was, well more anger, but under all _that_ was a deep pride for his agency. He wouldn't dismiss one of his best field agents suggestion casually, no matter how crazy. There was respect there too and Coulson was pretty sure that all that kept Nick Fury on the right side of the law and out of super villain spandex.

"Why?" He finally asked with a sigh.

That was the opening he had been waiting for. Taking a deep breath, Coluson readied his answer. "She's got something. I don't know what yet. I keep catching glimpses of it. Usually through her admittedly warped sense of humor. Occasionally, in the way she's fearless, even though she has this issue where she thinks she's expendable, she keeps going. I think she's got what it takes to make it in the field."

Nick leveled his gaze at him, leaning forward in his chair as he did so. "That is some toucy feeling, weak ass reasoning."

"Isn't it?" He smiled.

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear. This is all on you. You train her. She stays with you. At all times. If I ever catch her wandering around here alone – if I even get a _hint_ that she is going to say something smart ass in my direction, she's gone. I will wipe her memory and leave her drolling at some diner in Kansas. Do I make myself clear?"

"With your usual eloquence, sir."

"Dismissed." Fury said, snatching up a pile of papers that feel victim to his crushing grip. "Oh and Coluson!" He called as the agent made ready to leave. "I swear to every god I don't believe in, if she does something to make the company insurance go up before next year's rates expire, I will leave you in that diner with her."

"Of course." He answered. "Naturally."

And he let the door close shut behind him.


	3. Henry Camp

Her alarm was going off. How annoying, considering it was Saturday and she didn't have to be up for training till later in that afternoon. Darcy tired to ignore it and settle back down to sleep. The snippets of the dream she'd be having skirted her mind with extremely disturbing images. With any luck, she'd drift to a more mentally refreshing place this time.

If only her alarm would stop screaming at her. It was giving her a headache. It seemed to take every ounce of will power she had to lift her arm, which felt like it was dipped in layers of lead instead of a light tee shirt. Only when she went to grab her phone to snooze the damn thing, she found her fingers sinking in to something extremely cold and after a few seconds, trails of icy water trickled down her fingers.

That was enough to startle her back to semi-awake. She wasn't in her room and that nightmare hadn't been a dream.

"Darcy!'

In the distance, someone was calling for her. The voice was deep and masculine. The events of the last twenty-four hours flooded back to focus. The person calling for her was probably Coluson coming to scrape her out of the snowdrift she'd been bitch slapped in to. That was good, that meant by some miracle Coluson was still alive.

Ice started to worm it's way down her neck in the tender exposed area between her jacket and her shirt. Funny, she probably had a concussion if not a broken spine and all she could think about was how uncomfortable that cold wetness was against her back.

Darcy had been thrown like a rag doll end over end and lucky her, she still managed to land on her head before the momentum flipped her on to her back.

The pounding in her head was getting worse and she thought this might be a good time to get up and access the situation. Only, when she tired to move little warning alarms shot through her body, confirming that she was down for the count. That thought ignited panic that fought its way through the pain, catching up with her rapid heartbeat and keeping pace. She was hurt. Really _hurt._

That voice kept calling for her and she desperately wanted to answer but like the nightmare she often had where her screams had no sound, her voice had turned traitor.

Traitor…

The words burned a path through her emotions and oddly, that helped clear her mind. Anger was no morphine but damn, if it didn't take the edge off the pain.

They had been betrayed.

~.~

Seven months earlier.

It was a Thursday. Snow was falling, the wind was blowing and the sky was overcast with the promise of snow, snow and more snow. When Coluson had said, "secret recruiting mission' Darcy had immediately thought _warm, exotic, exciting!_

Not so much.

Her second day on the job found her in Kansas, stuck in a small and extremely dirty motel as a storm raged outside. It was a shockingly ordinary scene, one that could have been plucked right out from any of her family vacations.

The ride to Topeka had been a bit awkward at least for Darcy. She found herself seated in a white Ford Taurus as Coluson flipped through the channels, trying to hone in on a station that could cut through the static of the boonies. After a full cycle through the stations, he gave up with a sigh and settled back behind the wheel.

The car itself was a tragedy. Apparently Coluson took his 'secret' missions seriously and had picked a ride that was just the right shade of ugly and beat up that it was forgettable. At least the interior was clean and the seats comfortable.

The two didn't exchange many words that first day as they drove out of Colorado. Darcy, for her part, didn't want to question her sudden change in occupation least it be recanted and Coluson, well she assumed he probably didn't have too much to say in general.

When she finally couldn't take the silence anymore, she asked why, on her second day of work she was headed out on a top-secret mission instead of to an HR department to fill out W2's and watch horrible movies on sexual harassment in the work place, Coluson had actually smiled. Turns out that training in SHEILD, at least for the human non-super powered employees, was done eighty-five percent hands-on and very little in formal training.

"Too much of what we do is 'need to know' basis." Coluson explained. "Look at it this way. Let's say I stick you in a classroom, debriefed you on all the things we're likely going to run in to and gave you advance combat training. That would take at least a year to get the basics down. Then, I get you in the field and you either panic and became a liability or you decide that the benefits of the dark side are too tempting to pass up and you defect taking all that training and knowledge with you."

"That would suck for you guys."

"Yeah, it would. So here's how we're going to do this - You don't have any military training which is not common for a SHIELD agent and you're not specialized enough to qualify for our intelligence branch. Since you're an unconventional recruit, your training is going to match that.

First, we'll cut your teeth on a few recruiting missions, see how you adapt to being on the field, get you use to the pressure, let you follow my lead. In between those, we'll tempter it with plenty of combat training. On the weekends, you'll be in a classroom seeing if those programming skills of yours have any real world applications. Does any part of that sound unreasonable to you?" He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

She lifted her hands in a pacifying motion. "So far so good. When do I get my own black suit?"

"You don't. What you're wearing is fine."

Darcy cringed at that. There hadn't been time to pack. Coluson promised all of her stuff was already on the way to SHIELD headquarters. All she was allowed to take was what she had on, which having been recruited on a Friday, meant jeans with a lovely red shirt. She swore she caught Coluson fighting back a smile.

"So, what happened to your last partner?" She asked before she could stop. Mentally, she kicked herself. Nothing like adding to the tension by asking about what was probably a sore subject. To her amazement, Coluson arched an eyebrow and chuckled.

"He got folded in to a division of CIA intelligence. He turned out to be an extremely gifted in practical theory of astrophysics."

"Oh." Darcy said, caught off guard. "That wasn't really the soul baring answer I thought you'd give."

"You think he got killed in action and I'm haunted by a past I can't let go?"

"Maybe."

"You have got to lay off the comics. No, it happens a lot with field agents. SHEILD isn't shy about reassigning agents when they could be of more use elsewhere. You'll come to find we're flexible – we have to be."

Darcy looked out the window, watching the endless white scenery slip by. "That must suck for you. Spending all that time with someone, training them only to have them leave for a better job as soon as they get useful."

His tone was decidedly less humored when he answered. "Well, sometimes they do die."

~.~

Later that night, once they had settled in to their adjoining rooms, a Coluson let himself in, carrying a small black hand case with him.

"I have a gift for you." He said, clicking open the case that revealed a small, hand held gun tucked away inside.

She carefully took the gun from him. Darcy was immediately struck by how small it was. It fix easily in her palm with room to spare.

"What is this? Like some amazingly powerful yet small package of death?" She asked.

"No, that's purely for show, it's a .22. The best that's going to do is make a loud noise that will hopefully attract an agent that has a real gun."

"Wait, wait, let me get this straight – you're giving me the gun equivalent to a rape whistle?"

Coluson nodded, tilting his head towards the holster on the back of the chair, indicating she should put it on. "Once you spend a few more hours on the firing range, I _might_ let you have a better gun."

"This is because I couldn't remember how to tell if the safety was on when you asked if I had combat training."

"Do you remember now?"

Darcy flipped the little gun over in her hand, locating the tiny switch by the back of the trigger. The top part of the switch had a red dot and the rest was the same gun metal gray as the rest of the weapon. "Um.. Red means it's not going to fire? Like red means stop?"

Looking up at her partner, she could tell he was sorely tempted to grab the small gun from her hands.

~.~

The trailer park they ended up at was only slightly less impressive than the motel they had stayed in. It was early morning and all was silent.

"This is were our recruit lives?" Darcy asked with open disbelief. 

Coluson shrugged and took a sip out of his coffee cup, eyes roaming over the dilapidated mobile home. He had insisted on stopping to get a box of donuts as well but hadn't touched any of them yet. Darcy had a hunch he bought it only to tease her because she had commented about 'stereotypes' when they rolled up to the Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. It was admittedly hard to tell what was really going on in that head of his. Coluson seemed to only have one expression and that was mildly amused.

"Here's what we know. This is the home of one 'Henry Camp'. Former Master Sergeant in the Army dishonorably discharged. Did a few years in Rykers Prison before making parole last month. Our local office started picking up traces of Asgardian radiation coming from this trailer park."

"Asgardian?" Darcy asked, "As in "Asgard" where Thor is from?"

"Exactly. Objects and people from there give off a faint residual radiation that we became aware of after studying Thor's hammer. The signal becomes stronger when they use what we'll call 'magic' for lack of a better term."

"This Henry guy is from Asgard?"

"No he's not. We're here to find out how he came to give off that signature and if possible, bring him in for debriefing to see the extent of his ablatives, if any."

"Ok, sounds easy." Darcy tipped her nearly empty coffee cup to her new partner. "Let's go get him."

~.~

Things had gone poorly. Maybe the ford Taurus looked at home in the trailer park and she had to admit, she fit in pretty good all causal Friday and a borrowed coat that was a size too small – But Coluson, even wearing a heavy snow jacket that covered his serious business suit, walked in a no nonsense manner that screamed 'law'.

She had to admit she was impressed that Henry Camp even opened the door when they knocked. If she had been fresh out of jail and such an odd pair had come calling on her, she wouldn't have answered.

From the other side of the screen door, Henry's eyes wandered over Darcy before flicking to Coluson and staying fixed. He looked very ex-military, all buzz cut and biceps and the looked he fixed on her partner was openly suspicious.

"Yeah?" He gruffed out.

"Mr. Camp, Henry Camp? I'm here on behalf of Strategic Hazard Interve-'

Henry suddenly smashed open the door, the frame of it catching Coluson right in the face as it bent from the strength of Henry's push. There was a startled 'mmph!" and next thing she knew she was being shoved out of the way as Henry made a break for it.

~.~

Back in the car less than an hour later, the silence was subdued and slightly pissed, at least on Coluson's half of vehicle. On Darcy's side, she was practically bouncing between the exhilaration of adrenaline and joining Coluson in his anger. Only, she would bet they were not angry for the same reasons.

"He's getting away." She pointed out. "We need to go after him!"

Coluson's good eye glared at her, the other hidden and was likely turning all shades of black under the compress he was holding against it. "Not our job."

"It's totally our job! The bad guy is getting away! We're good guys! We don't let them get away!" She retorted, scandalized.

The older agent sighed, using his free hand to type away at a data pad sitting in his lap. "That isn't _our_ job. It's not _our_ department. I'm filing a report now. Don't worry, it won't take them long to send one of the Avengers. I believe Vision is the closest."

"But I don't get why if we still have a chance of capturing him, we don't go after him! We're right here!" She pointed enthusiastically towards the far end of the park, where one Henry Camp had leapt over the barbwire fencing with ease and vanished in to the snowy fields beyond.

Coluson reached behind her seat, fishing around for something and a second later, his hand returned holding a cold glazed donut. "Henry has become more of a threat than we can deal with. One critical part of our job is understanding when to call in the heroes and letting them do theirs. Think you can handle that?"

She begrudgingly took the offered donut, biting through the flakey glaze as he reached back and grabbed another for himself. "I could have caught him."

"Not a chance." Coluson retorted.

They ate in silence - one that was slightly more comfortable than it had been yesterday but still miles away from easy.


	4. Snow Melt

The next morning, painfully early and snowing, Darcy was waiting in the POS ford Taurus in front of a quilt shop in Topeka Kansas. She watched as the frost on the windshield slowly crept back as the defroster sputtered in the background filling the car with the smell of exhaust.

She wasn't sure how long Coluson has been inside. Being half asleep really took the edge off waiting. A few dozes off and a head bob later the driver side door opened, letting in a rush of unwelcome freezing air.

Her partner settled in to the driver's seat beside her, bundled in a heavy black jacket and matching scarf. The shiner on his left eye finishes off the matching ensemble but what caught her attention was the fresh coffee cup in his hand.

"Where did you get that?" She asks, nodding towards the cup.

Coluson took a second to sip his coffee before making a show of looking out the car window to the sign above the quilt shop. "Stitch On Quilts.' Apparently. Ready?"

"Wait wait, what was that all about? Why did we stop at a quilting shop at four am and why didn't I get a cup of this magical 'stitch on quilts' coffee?"

"Two reasons." He answered as he put the car in to reverse to back on to the main street. "First, you don't get to go to the debriefings. Only I get to go to the debriefings and from there, I'll decide what you need to know and no debriefing, no coffee. Plus" he added, pausing to take another drink, "it was long walk back to the car and I needed to keep my trigger hand free."

"You're right handed, you were carrying the coffee in your right hand." She retorted, fighting a yawn.

Coluson shot her a look as he turned back on to the freeway. "Fine, I just didn't want to carry two."

~.~

The car ride was long and silent. As Darcy fumbled with her visor to try and block out the glare of the rising sun, Coluson's deep voice finally broke the silence. 

"Henry Camp got away. Vision wasn't able to find him after he left the trailer park. They think he's heading back towards L.A to join up with a group calling themselves the 'Wreaking Crew'. We have agents on the ground looking for them but as of now, no luck. There's been an increase of Asgardian radiation lately which is making it hard to trace exact locations."

Darcy digested the information in silence, sinking lower in her seat to try and take advantage of the square of shade afforded by the visor. Once she was finally comfortable, she looked over at her partner. "If Camp is in L.A, why are we heading east?"

"We've been assigned to a recovery mission. Davenport, Iowa. A piece of space debris, possibly alien in origin has been reported as having crashed landed there about an hour ago."

That perked her up and for the first time that day, she smiled. "We - me and you - are going to recover an alien _something_ that crash landed on Earth? Like when SHEILD recovered Thor's hammer?"

Coluson nodded. "More or less. Our mission is to get in, recover or contain until recovery is possible, depending on the scope. What we're after is registering as a fairly small object but is giving off an quantum signature equivalent to mass five times that of the sun."

Grin widening, finally feeling like part of the group, Darcy looked back at the road. "Awesome."

~.~

It is bitterly cold in Iowa. The kind of cold that slices through clothing and settles in around the bone. Darcy can't shake it, can't cover up enough to escape it. Three hours of walking through the outskirts of the city has taught her all she can do is endure it. In silence. Her partner isn't big on small talk. Coluson seems unfazed by the sub-arctic temperatures. She mentally adds that to the list she's making.

The mental one that argues Coluson might be a robot.

One thing is very clear right off the bat. Iowa is very much not New Mexico and this is very much not the adventure she had been expecting.

So far, it's a lot of trudging through snow piled streets and a whole lot of nothing.

Occasionally, Coluson would stop, pull out a small hand held device that Darcy couldn't catch a good look at, and change direction.

"We should be coming up on it soon. The energy signal is localized.." He glances at her, "Means what we're looking for should be about the size of -' He paused, thinking for an object to compare it to. "An eight track."

"An 'eight track'? Ha ha, very funny."

"Is a 'MyPod' still a thing?"

"It's 'iPod' and yes, remember, you stole mine back in New Mexico."

"That wasn't stealing." He corrected. "For one, we gave it back. For another, we're SHIELD. Deal with it."

A soft whirring sound cut off the conversation and Coluson looked down at the flashing screen on the device. "Should be around here." He said, taking a second to consider their surroundings. "With the amount of snow that's fallen since the object landed, we're going to have to call in a blanket team. Corner off the area, melt off all this snow."

"Or would could ask them." Darcy said with a tilt of her hooded head. Standing off the road, hugging as near to a wall as possible for protection from the wind were two men in heavy snow jackets and hats.

Coluson gave her an incredulous look. "After we call in the team, we can detain them for questioning. Or," he continued as he fished his phone out of his incredibly big jacket pockets. "We ignore them all together. I like that one, let's go with it."

"Come on, let's ask. Think about it. Two guys, standing out here in the freezing cold. They must have seen something or maybe they even picked it up! What would stop them from walking off while we're waiting for SHEILD to sweep in and clear out all this snow? It's a major waste of our time, not to mention tax payers money! It will take three seconds to ask and hey, it's free! No need to bleed us tax paying folks dry."

"Trouble with the IRS?" He asked, his fingers dancing over the touch screen of his phone.

"I'll have you know I pay my taxes and on time, almost!"

Coluson gave her an infuriating smile as he lifted the phone to talk and pointedly turned his back on her.

Feeling like she had been goaded in to action, Darcy stomped through the snow towards the men.

At first they didn't notice her, giving her time to inspect them more closely. The taller one appeared to be holding something in his hands. The other shot a nervous glance towards his companion before scanning the streets. He catch sight of Darcy as she stumbled on to the sidewalk and nudged his friend, who quickly closed fumbled to put whatever he was holding away.

Everything about them screamed no good.

And that meant it was time for Darcy to step up and start acting like a member of SHEILD. Darcy pulled herself up and walked towards the guys like she meant business. "I'd like to ask you gentlemen a few questions."

"Oh shit!" One of the men yelled.

What happened next was pure reflex. Bad guy ran past her, Darcy pursued.

"Hey! You!" She shouted to the retreating men. "Stop!"

Her words had the opposite effect. With an ease that seemed unnatural through all the snow and driving wind, they sprinted away in different directions. Darcy didn't lose a beat. Her attention was all for the taller badie, the one that probably had a space rock in his pocket.

"Oh no you don't." She yelled, tugging the tiny firearm free from the hostler under her jacket. The safety button was on - She was fairly certain Coluson had glued the button in place last night after he took all her ammo - but it still looked threatening as hell and that was the point.

The jerk ahead of her glanced back once to confirm she was still there and preceded to use his freakishly long legs to propel himself over a giant snow drift. Darcy slid to a stop, dodging around the pile and running to the side, trying to get to a cleared path on the road. By the time she found a walking path that wasn't five feet deep in the white stuff, the figure in black was a distant thought.

And that's when Darcy got mad. She wasn't in great shape but she was in decent shape but more than that, she knew that back there, Coluson was watching her and what she lacked in lung capacity, she made up for in pride.

Darcy ran.

She leapt over the icy patches on the pavement, digging in deep with her snow shoes where she was able. Her boots pounded the road like they had something to prove and gave chase with everything she had. Ahead of her, the man in black had slowed down, probably thinking he had left her far behind. By the time he heard her approach and turned to look, she was on him.

With a graceless tackle, Darcy's one hundred and thirty five pounds met his six-five two and some spare change frame like a crystal glass thrown at a brick wall. If the tall creep wouldn't have lost his footing on the pavement, Darcy never would have brought him down. Point one for the snow.

"You are so under arrest!" She tried to scream, dragging in a few desperate breaths.

"You crazy witch!" He groaned, "I think you broke my back!"

"… are you crying?" She asked in disbelief.

"No." Sniffed the man, who now that Darcy got a closer look couldn't have been more than twenty. "Here, god just take it." He threw what he had been holding in his hand at her. "I wasn't buying it, it's not even mine."

Darcy rocked back on her heels, looking from the small bag on the ground back to the punk before her. "Is that weed?" She asked deadpan. "You ass!" She smacked him across his chest, drawing another whine from him. "Why the hell did you run?"

"I don't know? Cause you were chasing me?" He looked at her uncertainly. "You aren't a cop, are you?"

"God!" She yelled, rolling back on to her feet. "Perfect, just perfect. I should arrest you."

"Um, you're not going to?" He asked, sounding hopeful.

Growling, Darcy rolled her eyes and started huffing her way back to her partner, completely ignoring the teen that couldn't seem to believe his good luck.

By the time she made it back to Coluson, he was directing a few other suits that had started to erect plastic median dividers while other's dressed in coveralls were cornering off the road with construction cones.

He didn't spare her a glance as she came to stand next to him. "Agent Lewis, you're just in time. One of the main pipelines burst last night from the drop in temperature. Nothing major. The city is blocking off this street for a few hours while they access the pipes under it. Should be up and good to go in," He glanced at his phone, "forty five minutes." Now he looked over at her. "Walk with me."

Moving past a row of orange cones, he started to move back towards their Lincoln. "Let me be frank. Some people would see your rash nature as a glaring character flaw in our line of work. And they'd be right. You're going to see a lot of things - things that are going to change you forever. You're going to work with people and be witness to events that will challenge every inch of your moral fabric. On a day to day basis, you are going to be pushed to the very brink of your limits and often, you're going to be pushed past them. In a job like ours, we don't get to have egos, that's reserved for the superheroes. We don't get to make mistakes because mistakes get noticed and we are only effective if we aren't noticed."

"Wow so not selling this." Darcy grumbled, tugging her jacket on tighter.

"What we _do_ get," He continued as if she hadn't spoken, "what we have that is absolutely essential, is the drive to carry on being spectacular even when no one is ever going to know it. What I'm trying to say," Coluson stopped at the hood of the car, turning to face her, "Is that sometimes, a hooded figure on the street is a super villain and sometimes it's just a kid selling some pot. Temper that drive, let me help you learn how to focus it and I promise you… when the time comes for you to encounter a super villain, you will make SHEILD proud, even if you're the only one that ever knows it."

Darcy feels an odd mixture of shame and a desire to be this shadow ninja he thinks she can be and settles for a slightly lopsided smile. "That was the nicest backhanded comment anyone has ever given me."

"Don't get use to it."

~.~

Several gallons of melted snow later and a small blob of…something is uncovered. It's lackluster and tarnished. It looks a little like a rock that caught fire and melted and Darcy suffers her second disappointment when it and not the impressive hammer of thunder she had been picturing sends Coluson's device singing. Their team of specialists have it contained within minutes in a box made of an alien material that her partner gives her the name for but won't repeat when she asks.

They watch as it's loaded in to a SHEILD van and carted off to head quarters.

No one else seemed to notice and Darcy writes it off to her sleep deprivation, but Coluson looks worried.

Three days later, the first attempt is made on Jane Foster's life.


	5. Pay Day

There was a lot of ways Darcy expected an average day to start.

Those 'ways' had grown by leaps and bounds since joining SHEILD and becoming Coluson's partner.

But even then, she reasoned that there had to be _some_ limit. Surely. Right? There had to be one mundane thing still locked away safe in the realm of "normal".

With a vindictive check mark, she marked off depositing her paycheck as no longer being a safe, non-work related thing.

The concrete wall gave an unhealthy groan that jolted her from her reflection as another blot of energy sliced in to it, sending up a cloud of thick white smoke and dust and splitting the air with an electric wail. This was a very bad thing as Darcy had chosen that particular wall to hide behind.

_No, I couldn't just leave when the rest of the hostages ran screaming. _She thought, as she fumbled to draw her gun from it's holster. The SHIELD training had sunk in, it seemed and she was in full force 'stop the bad guy mode' only, there was just one thing...

"It's a monkey!" Darcy screamed in to her ear piece over the noise of the laser gun.

Coluson, the bastard, seemed amused on the other end, "Mandrill is a mutant, not a monkey. He recently escaped from prison and now, thanks to you, we know where to pick him up at."

"The monkey is robbing a bank!" Darcy insisted, dropping the gun and clenching her hands against her ears as another shrill whine sliced through the air. This one was closer, showering the young agent in debris. In an effort not to be crushed by the falling wall, she scrambled across the lobby keeping as low to the ground as possible. So far monkey man hadn't noticed her.

_Right, because all the sane people left._

"Try to stay calm." Coulson coached, "back up is on the way. Don't engage him." He added, as if that wasn't the furtherest thought in her mind.

_Gun Gun Gun!_ She berated herself as she realized she was no longer holding it. With a quick scan, she looked back over to where she had just ran from.

_Ah ha!_ She shot a side glance to the monkey mutant and finding him still preoccupied with helping himself to the contents of the vault, made a mad dash for her discarded firearm.

"What do I do?" She hissed, as it belatedly dawned on her that she was back where she started, hugging the crumbling lobby wall for cover.

"Keep him there till the Mutant League arrives or we do. Don't let him leave." The tone wasn't humorous anymore. It held the tightness of an order and it was clear he expected her to carry it out. Never mind that this was her first solo confrontation. Or that up until the five minutes ago, she didn't know there _was _mutants.

"I feel like there's some fatal gaps in my training, _partner_." Darcy yelled back. If Coulson retorted, it was lost because the monkey, this so called, Mandrill, had finished filling up his two large trash bags with the contents of the vault and was doing a loping stride across the lobby. Heading straight towards where Darcy was currently holed up.

_Shit._ There it was again, that irrational need to protect others. To do her job. To prove to herself. AKA her personal death wish. Looking around the jagged corner of broken concrete, Darcy clutched her gun. Coulson trusted her to do this, to hold the bad guy till the heroes got here and she was going to do that.

Somehow.

"SHEILD!" She yelled, jumping to her feet and blocking his path. With more gusto than she felt, she pointed her gun towards the advancing mutant and mentally apologized to Coulson for engaging the enemy. If he had been here, it's likely her partner would have known how to keep the rampaging ape occupied without compromising himself. But Darcy wasn't her partner and hadn't learned the subtle art of combat.

Turns out, the monkey was a lot closer than Darcy thought. And a lot bigger than he had seemed when he was standing at the back of the vault. Up close Mandrill looked like a man sized chimpanzee who had a flare for capes and bright colored spandex. Complete with wicked looking claws and a gapping, fang filled mouth.

Darcy really wished she would have noticed the claws before getting out from hiding. Apparently her casing for danger still needed some work.

Mandrill paused in mid stride in the middle of the wreckage, switching one bag bulging with cash from hand to his hand-like foot as he considered her. Oddly enough, one of those large fish filled tropical tanks had managed to escape the carnage and as luck would have it, he was standing right next to it. A single piece of dry wall was bobbing up and down on the top of the water. It was absurd that Darcy took note of that. Almost like her mind was pointing out the little things it could process and not the six hundred pound impossibility in front of her.

"Shield." He repeated back, with a deep throaty growl. It was hard to tell through the throaty tones of his voice, but Darcy thought she picked up on sarcasm. "_One_ SHIELD agent?" He asked, sniffing sharply. "This will be insultingly quick." He snarled, "And extremely painful."

With an animal grace, he tossed the bags aside, launching towards Darcy in the same deft movement. There was just enough time to register Mandrill was shooting towards her before a huge, meaty hand smashed in to her side, tossing her across the lobby.

By some twist of lucky, Darcy landed on one of the plush leather couches that dotted the sitting area, cushioning her fall as it toppled over from the force of her landing. It was a tribute to the long hours of physical training with Coulson that Darcy had managed to not only turn the end-over-ass fall in to a roll, but that she held on to her gun while doing so.

Any pride she felt at the feat was crushed as Mandrill let out a primal scream and rushed her again with inhuman speed.

Muttering a stream of 'oh nos' - Darcy ran. Behind her, the air was filled with sounds of furniture breaking, the brittle cracks of walls giving way to the fury of the monkey as he jumped from pillar to pillar, closing the distance in seconds.

At the last second, Darcy spun around and fired. There hadn't been time to aim, hadn't even been time to think. The auto pilot of her brain took over, all she registered was the recoil tossing back her arms and the monkey screaming in anger.

There was a few things she learned right away after that. The first being that she needed a much, much bigger gun. At first, she wasn't even sure she hit him until his scream of pain confirmed she had. The second, and this one was far more important - even after hours of shooting range practice, she was a still a lousy shot. The tuff of skin missing on the monkey's ear didn't do much in the 'contain the threat' field. Oh but it did wonders on his mood.

With salvia dripping from his fangs, Mandrill screamed at her and lunged. He plowed in to her with the force of a semi-truck, sending them both slamming in to the ground - Darcy on bottom, thank you very much. Her back announced it was done for the day, closing down in shades of pain that blossomed around her lungs. Mandril recovered first, pulling back a huge paw to rip her to shreds.

In the end, it wasn't her SHEILD training that saved her. It was a basic math. Big male _anything_ straddling her equals slamming her knees up with enough force to knock the bastard to a new singing range. He couldn't even scream when her knees hit home. All he could do was fall over on his side, clutching his abused manhood.

Gasping, Darcy rolled away, from him. There was a steel girdle of fire and saw dust around her ribs and a sharp throbbing pain broadcasting from her side that let her know the monkey had probably caught her with his nasty claws. Those things could be pushed aside by the very real threat of what would happen if monkey-man got a chance to repay the sex change.

She didn't feel much better with her trusty .22 back in hand after discovering it had the fire power of a pea shooter but hey, it was that kind of day.

"Move," She managed to force out, "And I'm going to shoot you. Again."

Thank all that was good and great in the world that SHIELD agents picked that moment to swarm up around her. Wearing all black and carrying, Darcy noted with some bitterness, guns the size of Texas, it took them only a few minutes to bind Mandrill up tight and carry him out to the waiting armed guard.

It was only when she felt Coulson's familiar hand on her shoulder did Darcy notice she was still pointing her gun at the empty spot Mandrill had been in.

"You ok?" He asked.

Darcy wetted her lips. "Yeah, yeah fine. Good. Hey look, I caught the bad guy."

"Yeah, you did. Let's get you checked out and I can debrief you after." Darcy nodded, lowering her arms. Coulson signaled to someone behind her, probably the team medic. "What were you doing here anyway?" He asked as they waited.

"Cashing my check."

Coulson frowned, "Why don't you use the SHIELD branch bank? They handle all agent finances."

"Oh I know." Darcy answered. "But they have this deal going on, if you open a checking account you get a free iPad."

"Huh." He looked her over and smiled. "You did good today. It was exactly what I had in mind, but you did good."

Turned out praise from her partner did wonders on her mood, and despite it all, she returned the smile.

The medic team came over with a stretcher, the tall man in the front with blonde hair gently led her over to it. They started to bandaged the gashes on her leg as they rambled off questions about her medical history. Darcy must have answered because the questions kept coming, but she couldn't really focus. All her attention was on her partner, that was busy directing agents around the lobby. In the middle of the hustle and bustle, a distraught man in a business suit came over to Coulson, motioning to the disaster of the lobby with a kind of frantic distress. There was some nodding on Coulson's part before he pulled out his SHIELD badge and instantly, the man - Darcy guessed the bank manager, was all thank you's and gratefulness.

The medics were about to push Darcy's wheeled stretcher away when she noticed Coulson fishing something else out of the breast pocket of his suit. It was a folded piece of paper, the same off blue as her own paycheck stub. He said something to the manager, who blinked a few times in surprise before snapping out of it and slowly nodding. It took the man a few tries to get the gate to the counter to open, but once he did, he handed Coulson a form.

Just before Darcy lost the sight of the lobby, she could have sworn she saw the manger take the form back from Coulson and hand him black box with the symbol of an apple on it.


	6. Black Bags

Darcy's back looks like a paint-by-numbers in bruises – both a reminder and a badge of pride that she might be cut out for this. That's the worst of the damage from her run in with the mutant and thankfully it looks a lot worse than it is. She's the kind of stiff that radiates out from within and for the first few days after her big mission, Darcy walks like she's ninety.

In the halls of her SHIELD dorm, other agents nod to her as she hobbles along about her business. A few stop and trade stories about their own they run in with the big baddies out there and for the first time, Darcy feels like she's come home.

There's a black bag on her bed in her room at the agency waiting for her.

It's her first night home after a day and night of observation and she stares at it dumbly for a minute. Wondering where it came from, what it could be and having hung around with her partner long enough that her thoughts take on an immediately paranoid edge. For a moment, she wonders if Mandrill found a way to send her a thank you gift from his prison cell.

There _is_ a piece of notebook paper lying over the duffle straps like a welcome mat and even from the door, she can pick out her partner's clean hand writing.

Not a bomb then.

Maybe.

Some of his training exercises are extreme.

She's still cautious as she pulls back the thick zippers to reveal a black weapon's case. Inside is the most beautiful gun Darcy's ever seen. It's heavier than it looks and she has to cradle it in two hands. Tucked under it is a second note;

_Hand to hand might not be your thing - C_.

In the years to come in her work with SHIELD, Darcy becomes proficient in a several fire arms but she never goes anywhere without that Sig P239 in her hostler.

~.~

Once Darcy is back in the field officially, she and Coulson quickly fall in to a comfortable pattern. She rides with him in various POS's on often exciting new adventures and sometimes, if she pays extremely close attention or manages to catch him by surprise, Coulson opens the door a little wider in on what it means to be a secret agent.

Today – today is different.

"What do you mean?" He asks. His eyes are shielded by black glasses as they drive towards the setting sun on the city highway. The buildings catch the clouds overhead and everything is pink and red.

"You've been quiet. And not in that smugly superior way you have when you're about to drive me in to some horrible mission." Darcy clarifies, "I mean, like honestly quiet. Bad quiet. Worried quiet."

With a quick glance in her direction, Coulson seems to make up his mind about something. "The briefing is in the glove box. It's not officially our mission. Just something Fury has been passing out to the senior agents to get their read on."

"You keep important briefings in the glove box?"

Coulson smiles but doesn't answer.

Shrugging, Darcy clicks the dash open and grabbing the thick white binder within, tries to quickly scan through its contents. Little known fact that she gets violently ill if she reads in a car – and that's not something she wants her partner to know. He has an odd sense of humor and isn't above exploiting those kinds of things.

Most of it is classified gibberish, a codex she's starting to learn but hasn't quite picked up. There is one thing that draws her right away, that's easy to understand and she can stare at without tossing her cookies.

"What does this map mean?" Inside, center page, is a map of the US, littered with blue and black dots randomly freckled out over its face. More black than blue and mostly centered around the Midwest.

Coulson doesn't have to look - that map has been keeping him up sleepless nights, though Darcy doesn't know that.

"That's the problem." He swallows hard. "The blue are areas where there's been alien contact over the last four months and the black is Asgardean run-ins."

Darcy nearly drops the binder in her surprise. "Aliens? Like, not from Asgard, human-looking Thor run-ins? E.T is phoning home in Wyoming?"

Her partner raises an eyebrow. "Correct. These aliens seem to have more destructive intentions and most aren't from Asgard."

"And I'm guessing this is a fairly recent development?"

"Well, no. The volume is the troubling thing. Usually Earth isn't worth the gas mileage for most of the heavy hitters. We get the occasional command and conquer party from the lesser planets, which are promptly dealt with in a manner not to encourage copy cats. It's the sheer _number_ of attacks. Seems like lately every backwater raiding pirate and intergalactic thug has decided we have something they want."

"Do we?" Darcy asks, eyes returning to scan the map.

Coulson's silence drags out this time and Darcy isn't sure if he'll answer. She knows SHIELD and she knows the silence isn't him trying to decide if she can be let in on the 'big secret'; more than likely, he's trying to decide which _one_ of SHIELD's deadly secrets could be the point of interest for the invaders.

She saves him from answering because at the end of the day, she is his partner and trust goes both ways.

"Why the increase in Asgardean attacks?" She asks instead, "Or I mean, why do we think they are related?"

Coulson lets out the smallest breath of relief at the topic change. "In the past, we weren't aware that Asgard existed. Until Thor landed in our laps – or on the hood of your range rover as it were – we misclassified them as mutant attacks or magic users.

We started tracking the Asgard radiation that's signature to their magic and weapons since Thor showed up. The first six months after the Bridge closed, it was pretty quiet. Now it's shooting up in activity and someone's gone so far as to recruit humans – like our dear friend Henry Camp – to an unknown end."

"Big baddie wants to take over Earth?" Darcy suggested.

"Always." Coulson smirked, "But the number of recruits is small and the attacks are contained and precise."

"Like they're looking for something." She finished for him. "Which brings us back to, 'which one of SHIELD's toys are they playing hide-and-seek with'?" She shook her head, putting the contents of the binder back and shutting the compartment. "Partner mine, you better _hope_ it's a SHIELD toy or you and upper management better start doing some looking of your own."

They finished the ride in silence.

~.~

"So explain to me again why we're in Canada?" Darcy asked, nursing a cup of coffee that was stale, cold and an all-out affront to her taste buds. Not surprising as it had been the forgotten cup that was left sitting in the backseat. Apparently, 'the middle of nowhere' wasn't the exaggeration she hoped it would be.

Coulson was watching her drink it with a mortified look on his face. "You were not kidding about your caffeine addiction."

She tipped the cup to him in a half-salute. "Next time warn a girl before you drag her three hundred miles from the closest 7-11."

"Noted." With a shudder, he turned from her and put the binoculars back up to his eyes, searching the woods for the yet unmentioned target of their drive.

Inpatient for an answer, Darcy tapped him on the shoulder with her free hand. "Canada. Explain."

Without lowering the binoculars, he answered, "Part of my job unofficial job title is cultivating relations with potential recruits."

"So that's what we're doing out here? Spying on a 'potential recruit'?"

"_Checking in_." He clarified, "I don't spy."

"If we're 'checking in' why are we hiding up in the woods looking down on some remote cabin? Why don't we just go down there and give 'em a friendly SHEILD 'hello!'?"

He lowered the binoculars from his eyes and if Darcy didn't know better she would say he looked like he was embarrassed. "That didn't go well. This is better, much better. Trust me."

Darcy watched her partner watching the cabin. "How in the world is this 'cultivating relations'?"

"He knows we're up here. I like to think dropping in on him once every five years has become a kind of enduring tradition, a reminder of the bigger picture." Under his breath, mostly to himself, he adds "At least he stopped shooting out my tires about ten years ago."

Darcy looks at him like he's crazy but can't say anything – after all, it was his constant visits every Friday that got her to rethink her own career. "Exactly how long have you been trying to recruit this guy?"

"Officially I'm not trying at all. This is my day off. What you need to understand," he answered, hedging the question, "is that SHIELD plays the long game. It isn't always about filling the rosters today or tomorrow or even fifty years from now. It's not even about SHIELD. It's about setting things in to motion with the _hope_ that in the end, it makes a difference for the better. When the bad guys can live forever or melt your brain with a look, you get creative in your allies."

He offers her the binoculars.

The man below is going to town chopping fire wood and Darcy can't help herself, focusing in on the broad chiseled chest for a minute before moving up the binoculars to get a better look at his face. He doesn't seem like anything special. Though the sideburns he's sporting would get him noticed in any crowd. He continues to chop wood, one strong stroke cleaving the lumber cleanly in half. If he is aware of them, he's playing it off well or honestly doesn't care. Once the pile of wood has been decimated, he grabs his flannel shirt from the deck and wipes the sweat off his face with it.

Right before he goes inside, he looks up.

It doesn't matter that Darcy has the safety of distance on her side and a new firearm in her holster. The man looks right at her and gives her a wink that manages to be the most threatening action she has ever experienced.

She drops the binoculars and surprisingly Coulson manages to catch them before they hit the ground. "He looked at me." Darcy spit out, heart still pounding. "Like, I don't know but I'm pretty sure I'm traumatized."

"Trust me, improvement." With a hand motion he indicates they should get back in the car. "If we're both really lucky, we'll be around for the next drop in. I bet it only takes another ten years before I can try approaching the front door again."

~.~

Exactly three weeks later to the day, Darcy is waiting for Coulson by their shared black range rover. Oddly enough, they take the most secret-agent looking car for their adventures on Fridays instead of the POS vehicle they always seem to get assigned for their real missions.

She's busy playing on her phone and wondering what her partner has in store for her today when her _other_ phone starts to ring. That never happens. She fumbles to get it out of her pocket, startled.

She's being assigned, officially, with her partner Agent Coulson. There isn't a location given, only that they are to report to hanger seven immediately for departure. No other details, just a name.

Before she can think, she's rushing to her room to grab her away bag – the bag every agent keeps packed but that she personally has left unused in the corner of her closet since her recruitment.

Only once she's sitting next to her grim faced partner waiting to depart does she fight down the rush of adrenaline enough to think to ask him; "What's 'Project Pegasus?"


End file.
